All That Matters Conference Celebrates 21st Year in Singapore

This year’s All That Matters conference, an annual cross-disciplinary event connecting music, sports, gaming, marketing, and entertainment, takes place in Singapore on Oct. 2-7. The event starts with Music Matters Live, a three-day, free music festival showcasing 40-plus international artists.

Jasper Donat, co-founder/CEO of Branded and producer of All That Matters, explains why Asia is the most exciting region in the world today and how the conference will mark its twenty-first edition.

Pollstar : How did the conference come about? Jasper Donat: There wasn’t a music conference in Asia then [2005]. Midem Asia had disappeared a long time before. In the era after Napster, we put together a conference that celebrated all things in the music business. We first put it together in Hong Kong and grew it. Then we started doing things like Sports Matters in other countries. We moved everything to Singapore in 2011, because Singapore was becoming an amazing business hub for the entertainment business.

Why did the different business strands come together as one event? We brought the whole world under one roof in 2016, and called it All That Matters. You’ve got the music industry, the sports industry and gaming – these amazing industries – coming together and meeting.

Who comes and why? We don’t have 20,000 people; we have 2,000 people, but they’re all C-suite. We also have about 50 bands from all over the world for three nights. The bands all get to come to the conference to meet the music labels, the brands, artist managers – some amazing people they would never normally meet.

You are running a session with Pollstar , with additional speakers from companies including UMG, WME, Merlin, HYBE and many others. What can we expect? Live is where it all comes together. We will have AEG, Live Nation, the ticketing companies, and live venues. The live business [in Asia] right now is not just about selling tickets; it’s using live for tourism. People like Cathay Pacific and the Singapore Tourism Board will be there. Ed Bell, the global head of marketing for Cathay Pacific, is coming to talk about destination marketing and entertainment for tourism.

The Singapore Grand Prix is happening at the same time. How does it fit into what you are doing? The Singapore Grand Prix doesn’t want to just be C-suite, where it’s impossible to get a ticket. They want to really reach out to the communities and really promote culture. Two years ago, we created Youth Music Matters. If you’re in a band in Singapore and you’re under the age of 24, we do a battle of the bands. The winning band gets to play at the Grand Prix.

Why is Asia booming at the moment, especially for live music? Hong Kong has finally got a [major] venue with Kai Tak, which has 55,000 seats and a roof. The other thing with Hong Kong now is that it’s gone from 8 million people to 85 million people because you’ve got the Greater Bay Area. You’ve got Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Zhuhai and Macao. Governments around the region are all starting to invest in live events.

What do you want All That Matters to achieve? My definition of happiness is watching people swapping business cards. It means they’re meeting people that they don’t know. My definition of success is seeing people standing at the back of the room because there are no seats for them.

_Originally reported by [Pollstar](https://news.pollstar.com/2026/10/02/mind-over-matters-singapores-all-that-matters-conference-turns-21/)._